MicroRNA, a new target for engineering new crop cultivars.

Global sustainable development depends on, at least partially, the sustainable development of crop reproduction that provides food, cloth and bioenergy as well certain drugs. During thousands of years of human history, many crops have been domesticated for feeding the world. Perfectly, in the past 2 decades, scientists have innovated biotechnological tools for improving crop yield and quality. For sustainable development, more targets and tools are needed to develop. Among these, microRNA (miRNA) is becoming an emerging target for engineering new crop cultivars with high yield and quality as well tolerance to environmental abiotic and biotic stresses. miRNAs are an extensive class of small regulatory RNAs, which play essential roles in all plant biological and metabolic processes, not only in plant development and growth but also in compound biosynthesis and response to various environmental stress. miRNA-based biotechnology is becoming a new strategy for crop improvement, which will play important role in future agricultural sustainable development.